


Patience Yields

by irrationalno



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, Multi, multishippy or poly or very very friendly gen you can read it any way, s7 au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-24
Updated: 2019-03-24
Packaged: 2019-11-29 11:07:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18222329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irrationalno/pseuds/irrationalno
Summary: after the resurrection





	Patience Yields

‘Shiro,’ she said one day with no preamble, ‘Is it a proverb in your Earth culture?’

Shiro looked at her without pausing in the motion of stirring the nutrient packet in his bowl of hot water. ‘Is what a proverb?’

Allura had already stirred hers in and the not-now-unpleasant smell of the standard Altean shipboard soup reached his nostrils. There was something minty about that smell. ‘“Patience yields focus.”’

As if on cue, Keith sat down next to him and stuck a fingertip in Shiro’s soup, then tasted it and made a little gagging noise. Allura picked up a pebble; it hit Keith squarely in the chest.

‘Like you like it any more than we do,’ Keith grumbled. Then, softer, ‘The Blade kitchen slop is worse though.’

‘It’s not bad,’ said Shiro, mentally comparing the two.

‘You just can’t taste it,’ said Keith, then froze.

Shiro stopped stirring his soup and yanked Keith to his side with his left hand, squeezing him close. Keith melted into the rough embrace.

‘We don’t have one single Earth culture,’ Shiro said, holding Keith in place.

Allura nodded. ‘Lance was explaining something of the sort to me. I don’t suppose either of you have had the chance to realise, but neither did... does Altea.’

Shiro was silent. He’d started reading some of the files downloaded from the Castleship database sometime after joining the Princess’ quest, when Pidge and Coran had set themselves the task of translating some of the ‘wikipedia stuff’, as Pidge had called it, but there was a lot he still didn’t know.

He’d wanted to find out, but then.

Allura was still looking at him expectantly. He remembered her question.

‘Keith, lend me your knife.’

Keith sat up, reluctantly moving from where he was pressed snug against Shiro’s side, and handed him the luxite blade.

Shiro pressed the tip into the sandy soil, slowly drawing a character, then another. He twisted his upper body around a little to draw them so Allura could look at the term the way it was meant to be seen. She sat close enough, her knees not half a foot from his.

‘ _Gaman_ ,’ read Keith.

‘You kept up with your Japanese,’ said Shiro, smiling at him.

Keith looked at him with mild outrage, then settled back down against Shiro’s side.

‘That’s not in the database yet,’ said Allura. They’d been slowly working on a multilingual dictionary—English, Spanish, Samoan and Japanese, and High Altean— since right before the battle with Zarkon, but since that hadn’t been that long ago and everyone was so busy...

‘It means... to endure what feels impossible to endure, with patience and grace. It’s something like that.’

‘Ah,’ said Allura. Her eyes were soft now. It was as if she was looking right through his body, but he felt seen. He was seen. And heard.

‘I have ancestors who...’ Shiro stopped. Looked at Allura instead. ‘I don’t remember when I came up with “patience yields focus”. Must have been in junior year at the Garrison. My body hurt so much and I was angry all the time. I missed my grandfather. My parents who I never knew.’ It was easy to say the simple words to her, like this. They came out like stones, sharp and present, each lessening the weight. ‘Doctor Holt and Iverson never gave up on me, though. I don’t know why.’

‘Not this again, Shiro,’ said Keith, warningly.

‘I’m being honest.’

‘It’s your bright, internal light,’ said Allura. She wasn’t smiling.

‘Ah,’ said Shiro.

Allura’s eyes traced the kanji between them. He knew she’d memorised them already.

‘My father used to say, “when yalmors fight it’s the grass that suffers”.’

“There’s one exactly like that on Earth,’ said a new voice. They all looked up as Lance walked over to them, hugging some fruit to his chest. They looked like apples, but Shiro knew the texture was more like oranges.

‘There are yalmors on Earth?’ said Allura. Lance crouched down, setting his wares down carefully.

‘They look kinda like yalmors but they’re not? I guess. We call em elephants in English.’

Keith nudged Shiro, and Shiro handed him the knife back. Keith left a wide swatch of ground around Shiro’s neatly drawn kanji and sketched out a cartoon elephant. Allura leaned over to look at it, frowning.

‘When we reach Earth, we’ll take you to visit a zoo,’ said Shiro. He’d been to one last when he was five or six with his grandfather. The one in San Diego. He’d been a happy child.

Allura tilted her head as the translator did its job. ‘The animals are... imprisoned?’

Shiro looked away from her.

‘They’re not so bad, lotta them are extinct in the wild. We can also take you to one of the reserve forests,’ said Lance, smoothly. He pushed a fruit into Shiro’s slack palm, folded his fingers around it. Another he presented dramatically to Allura with both hands, who accepted it just as dramatically, with a little bow.

‘I would love to see both the zoo and the forest,’ said Allura, drawing Shiro’s eyes back to her.

She then split the orange-y apple fruit neatly along its segments and tried one wedge. ‘It’s quite sweet,’ she announced. Lance smiled and started peeling his own fruit. Shiro decided to save his for later.

Keith was drawing other animals in the soil now, lions and horses and dogs and foxes. _Patience yields foxes_ , thought Shiro. The laugh bubbled up from somewhere deep, unexpected.

‘Share with the class,’ said Keith.

‘It’s not that funny,’ said Shiro.

‘It better not be another one about dying, being dead, being wounded, or dying.’ Keith cocked his head. ‘Did I mention dying?’

Shiro punched him lightly on the shoulder, then folded his hand over it, the gesture embedded in his muscle memory.

Keith placed his hand over Shiro’s, pressing briefly but so warm.

‘Where are the others?’ said Lance, starting on a second fruit. Shiro drank the long-gone-cold soup, enjoying it anyway. It was a little hot on this planet, even close to sundown. But then its sun wasn't very far from it.

‘Romelle, Pidge and Hunk are doing maintenance on the lions,’ said Allura. ‘Krolia and Coran took Ryou fishing,’ said Allura.

‘They what?’ said Lance. There was a lake a couple of miles walking distance from where they were sitting now. Shiro had taken his first bath in a year right there. ‘Hey, why didn’t anyone ask if I wanted to join? Not the maintenance, I mean fishing!’

‘You can join them, they’re just over there,’ said Keith, pointing.

Lance frowned at Keith. ‘You come along too!’

Shiro watched Keith blink, then shrug. ‘Why not? I don’t have any gear though.’

‘You could just stab ‘em out of the water with that deadly knife of yours,’ said Lance, tucking the last fruit into Keith’s jacket pocket. Keith half-stood, then pulled Shiro into a hug, chest to chest. Shiro caressed his cheek, patted him on the back. Watched Keith slip into his boots.

There was a hole in his left sock. Keith always forgot to trim his toenails.

‘I don’t know how to fish like that,’ said Keith to Lance. ‘I don’t know how to fish at all actually.’

‘Seriously? Well neither do I! We’ll both learn something new today.’

Shiro laughed as their voices faded into the distance. Allura had finished eating her fruit and was now tracing unfamiliar symbols into the soil with a torn-off bit of skin from the fruit. The blank space had turned into a lively doodle pad now.

‘Princess...’

‘Shiro.’

‘How are you?’

‘Me?’ Allura seemed surprised at the question. That was painful. ‘I’m fine. I am happy, Shiro.’ There was a definite emphasis on the word ‘happy’.

‘Okay.’ He reached over, placed a hand on her hand that had paused in drawing. ‘Princess. _Allura_. Thank you. For everything.’ A distant rumble, not thunder. Black slipped to the surface of his consciousness, amplifying the sentiment. Allura looked a little less tired than she had the previous day. Her white curls were damp with sweat near her hairline.

He could feel his new brother’s joy along the connection, childlike, so bright he almost flinched. The water of the lake had been cool and perfect in the morning, and now Ryou was playing with abandon, with his friends.

Their friends.

Allura pulled her hand away and Shiro’s face fell. He looked down at the symbols he couldn’t read, because he had never learned. He’d meant to ask to learn someday.

Her arms around him were a surprise. He felt his eyes droop shut, tears budding at the seams of them. His arms circling her waist was a surprise, too. Allura pressed a kiss to his forehead, then his cheeks, then the corner of his mouth. Then she rested her chin on top of his head.

‘You never have to thank me for anything,’ she said, lightly enough. Shiro held her tight, shivering a little as the sun set over the horizon, trying not to think about how else things could have turned out.

**Author's Note:**

> i want to write/post more short pieces in this verse but this also works as a stand-alone ficlet


End file.
